Casablanca After Dark… Strange Excuses from the Regional Company and the National Electricity Office!

On the evening of Wednesday, November 11, 2026, the city of Casablanca and its surrounding areas experienced a sudden and widespread power outage that lasted approximately four hours, prompting both the Regional Multi-Service Company (SRM) and the National Office for Electricity and Drinking Water (ONEE) to issue official statements explaining the incident.

These statements revealed a sort of buck-passing; the Regional Company attributed the failure to the National Office’s extra-high-voltage lines, while the latter described the incident as “exceptional and rare,” resulting from damage to four main and backup 225-kilovolt lines simultaneously due to thunderstorms and strong winds, which raises serious technical questions about the effectiveness of the backup lines and the readiness of the grid, despite the issuance of advance warnings.

On the ground and from a humanitarian perspective, this crisis caused significant financial losses for small merchants, café owners, and restaurant operators, in addition to the suffering of residents and patients who rely on home medical devices, given the lack of real-time communication during the crisis.

This night of darkness coincided with the tragic collapse of a wall at Abdullah Kanoun High School in the Salmiya neighborhood, which claimed the life of one citizen and caused serious injuries, which fueled demands from residents and observers for moving beyond a culture of “after-the-fact apologies” and implementing the principle of linking responsibility to accountability to ensure the quality of infrastructure in the Kingdom’s economic hub.